TESTIMONY
962 Pacific Street Rezoning: Testimony With Background Context Relating to Displacement
0:39:04
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124 sec
Kevin Williams, the environmental consultant of this project, provides background context relating to the displacement of African American communities and those that economically disadvantaged.
Speaker 1
0:39:04
Kevin?
Speaker 8
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Kevin Williams with GCA.
0:39:06
Geo Environmental.
0:39:08
I'm the environmental consultant.
0:39:10
That prepared the environmental assessment for this project.
0:39:12
And I wanted to just take a brief opportunity to give a little bit of background context to to members of the commission relating to, as counsel member Hudson noted, the displacement of African American communities and and those that are associated economically disadvantaged in this area.
0:39:30
One of the things that's very important is the person that prepared the racial equity report to notice that is indeed true.
0:39:36
And the background context of that though is, even though this area has underwent considerable rezonings along the Avid Atlantic Avenue corridor, you know, some decades back as well as many of these private rezoning.
0:39:48
None of those rezoning had had been considered in terms of generation of affordable housing.
0:39:55
None of the private rezoning along the Pacific or the Grand Corridor were in place at the time that the census took account of this displacement.
0:40:04
None of the large scale are 7 zooming along Atlantic Avenue Corridor had NIH.
0:40:09
And to my knowledge, none of them took advantage of the inclusionary housing bonus that was created during the time of those rezoning.
0:40:16
So what you're seeing is an organic displacement, both through redevelopment that did not include NIH, and as well as a lot of the town homes that surround this perimeter that converted from multifamily homes back in the eighties nineties to single family higher income housing.
0:40:34
And so it's very, very important to note that you're going to see the infusion of NIH units related to the 2 rezoning that are have just recently come out of the ground as well as this rezoning that while it may not displace the statistics in terms of percentages of of people displaced, but it will increase the the numerical count of affordable units in the neighborhood, allowing people to remain and not be displaced in the neighborhood.
0:40:59
So I wanted to provide that context from the past development in this in this community district and census community.
Speaker 1
0:41:07
Thank you, Mister Williams.
